Vijay Seshadri's Wild Kingdom

[pylduck.livejournal.com]

Just a brief note about Vijay Seshadri's first collection of poems Wild Kingdom (Graywolf, 1996).



It appears that I am much more accustomed to reading poetry that pushes against the limits of language than I am lyric poetry. Seshadri's writing is definitely in the latter camp, and his poems take on regularly structured forms (and even often have rhyme schemes!).

I found myself drawn most to the longer poems in the final section of the book. Here, the poems took on a much stronger narrative focus (in addition to a lyrical voice), and they could be read almost like short stories. The final poem, "Lifeline," takes the form of a single, undifferentiated stanza that runs six pages with a regular meter (iambic pentameter?). The poem concerns a man who finds himself lost in the woods along the coast. As he wanders around in search of civilization and a way to get home, his physical suffering becomes an occasion for considering the meaning of life. The wildlife and environs, rather than becoming merely a way to reach notions of beauty, spurs him to considerations of mortality and longevity. Here is one section of the poem:

There was nothing hidden underneath this,
but it was small, so small, as the life
of his family was, his people, his species
among the other species--firs, owls,
plants whose names he didn't know--
all of them minute, and the earth itself,
its four billion plus years of life
just the faint, phosphorescent track
of a minute sea creature on an ocean
for the annihilating dimensions of which
words such as "infinite" and "eternal"
were ridiculous in their inadequacy.
He lay on his back inside the ferns
and listened to the rain's clepsydral ticking.
He tried to grasp--what was it?--
but it clattered away, that slight change
in the pressure binding thing to thing,
as when an upright sleeper shifts
just a little, imparting to his dreams
an entirely different train of meaning.
Beyond those clouds, the blue was there
which shaded to blackness, and beyond
that blackness the uncounted, terrifying
celestial entities hung suspended only
by the influence they had on one another.
And all of this was just a seed
inside a seed inside a seed. . . .

Also, online you can find Seshadri's comments on Elizabeth Bishop as a metaphysical poet.